Music & Books

Gay’s the Beat – What is gay music?

November 5, 2014

Patrick Cash asks what is gay music?

A gay couple were having a bad breakup fight. One of them was particularly upset, and got violent: smashing up the Camden Market ‘his and his’ egg cups in the kitchen; tearing the Apple TV down from the wall, in front of which they’d shared so many happy comedowns with the last of the G and Downton Abbey. The other just watched impassively, even as his Limited Edition Marc Jacobs for H&M vests were ripped apart and strewn about the flat.

Suddenly a switch flicked. He surged up, and knocked the rampaging one down with pure fury raging in his massive jar-opening muscles.

‘You do not touch the lifesize Kylie cutout!’

Why do we as gay men love our female pop singers with such passion? I was interviewing tattoo artist Jose Vigers recently, a man very firmly embedded into the ‘alternative’ queer scene, who spoke of Cher as his religious gay power.

When I worked at Ku Bar, there was a French manager who was placid and, shall we say, laissez-faire about everything. One night we were all going out, and someone made the mistake of saying the ‘I Am Sasha Fierce’ album doesn’t have enough strong songs. The taxi was almost driven off Vauxhall Bridge.

It’s an almost all-consuming fire, for Mariah fans and Cheryl defenders, and even those few Monsters left who haven’t given up on poor old Gaga raving away her artpop in the attic. I suspect its origins are in feminism. Because we grow up in a world where we can’t identify with male singers consistently asserting their straightness by how hard ‘them girls’ make their cocks spring:

‘Girl, let me look at it / Don’t you make me have to ask twice / You ain’t the only one here baby / so many girls in line going crazy outside,’ isn’t exactly G-A-Y chant along material. Or what anyone in their right mind would want to be heard saying in public – which is apt, as it’s Chris Brown lyrics. The track’s named ‘Love The Girls’, in case anyone was rushing to iTunes.

“Why do we as gay men love our female pop singers with such passion?”

Yet when Queen Bey intones ‘to the left, to the left’, that empowers us as gay men, because she understands our vulnerable souls against all those narcissistic fucks whom we could have another one of in a minute – yeah, that’s you, and I’m all the single ladies, too, and I’ll do the entire dance after one too many black sambucas in Circa on Saturday night. ‘Suck on that,’ the night ends with you screaming in tear-filled rage onto a possibly misjudged answerphone message, ‘because quite frankly, you weren’t that good when you were sucking me!’

Beyoncé, Madonna, Britney, Mariah, and even the many gyrating Mileys, are all fierce, independent women. Yes, they’re divas, but they’re loved because they can demand their dressing room be repainted ‘tangerine green with no busy patterns’ and get it done in a straight male-dominated world.

They also speak out for their gay fans, as Madonna did in Russia, and their music blares from every radio station. For gay men, who have grown up on the sidelines, adoring a figure so universally popular is a path to feeling socially included. And their music is, for the most part, upbeat and happy. Kylie smiles.

Yet is there a risk of losing our own identity with this worship? None of these singers are, after all, gay. However many times you secretly listen to ‘Best Thing I Never Had’ on repeat, or publicly pump out ‘Out of the Woods’ from the car windows, they are still heterosexual songs sung by women about men. The ass-fucking reality of your own life isn’t written into their words.

It took me some time to work out gay men’s relationship to music. Back when I was a hot-headed, indie-electro youngster, I dismissed this obsession with female pop as vacuous. Yet when I recently had an unrequited experience with a boy I liked, I did listen to ‘Irreplaceable’. I also listened, a lot, to Rudi Douglas’ ‘He Won’t Swim In My Ocean’.

Rudi Douglas

Rudi is an Irish singer-songwriter, he’s gay, and he writes beautifully about boys (‘he was only my king, because I crowned him’). Sounds like a simple enough statement, but it’s outrageously not. Do you remember on X Factor when Dannii made a controversial comment about a male contestant not changing the ‘he’ to ‘she’? There shouldn’t be a controversy.

“There’s little reason why a straight listenership wouldn’t be able to empathise with a gay love song – we as a gay community have proved we can empathise with straight love songs.”

But even our gay pop stars like Will Young and Sam Smith use the gender neutral ‘you’ to be radio friendly. It’s about commercialism, yes, but to take that literally ‘HeForShe’ step is also about bravery. And there’s little reason why a straight listenership wouldn’t be able to empathise with a gay love song – we as a gay community have proved we can empathise with straight love songs. It’s the same emotion, whatever our sexuality.

We have public figures externally known as gay, but there is little mainstream cultural insight into the internal gay experience. We could, and should, have songs on the radio by men about men. But to pave this path, our LGBT artists first need their own community’s support.

Luckily there is no shortage of excellent LGBT artists out there to explore. Alongside Rudi, another brilliant queer singer-songwriter is MJ Woodbridge (right). His potent, dexterous voice combines with huge choruses and pounding drums to create anthems that soar around the mind. You also might have seen him in certain East End clubs where he’s famed for his unashamedly androgynous look. ‘To Hell and Back‘ is a particular QX favourite.

We’ve written extensively about the magnificent Othon in QX, who captivates both in his spectacular live shows and the awesome Pineal album. Check out his collaboration with castrato-style singer Ernesto Tomasini ‘Dawn is Yet to Come’. Nu-folk singer Shura (left) became a huge YouTube sensation last summer with her song ‘Touch’, the video of which shows all the sexes in kisses. Gender-bending performance artist La John Joseph is getting a lot of attention for musician alter ego Alexander Geist.

And ushering in this new wave of LGBT music is the band who have forged the road for many to follow in their footsteps: The Irrepressibles. From songs like ‘In This Shirt’ (accompanied by a mesmerising YouTube video of visual poetry named ‘The Lady is Dead’), and ‘Two Men in Love’ they propel their unique, beautiful vision of proud gay love through Europe, the USA and even into Russia. A new interview with the band’s lead singer Jamie McDermott follows in the next pages, but to finish this article, here’s a quote from last time I spoke with him. Because I think, personally, it says it all:

‘I feel it’s very important that artists are strong and forward with their sexuality because young people in particular need to feel like it’s actually pretty cool to be gay and not ‘oh, you’re so gay’ as a cuss at school. If I was at school that would be amazing. I would love there to be a time when people were like ‘oh I’d love to be like that, that’s the coolest thing ever, I wish I was gay.’ Because it is cool, being gay.’

Read ‘LGBT Artists: In Their Own Words‘ with The Irrepressibles, MJ Woodbridge, Alexander Geist and Ebe Oke here.